Planning and the Multi-Local Urban Experience.
An interesting book about the new way of living and working. Philiosophical book discussing what it means to live, being present or absent.
Planning and the Multi‑Local Urban Experience
I took this book to learn what “urban planning” is.
This book answers part of the question, as it talks about the issue of old planning, a statistical view of living, and the new way of working.
It is more a philosophical approach to the topic: the “old” literature lacks definitions and adaptation to the new world where people live and work in different places.
So, in my opinion, it doesn’t expose the real problems of urban planning, but rather highlights missing points in traditional analysis.
The book is dense and short, so you need to focus; otherwise you miss the direction. As the book is mostly about ideas and concepts, it doesn’t focus on a particular area of the world (Europe vs. Asia, for instance). I think this is a missing point—you cannot compare the different states of urban planning.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed it a lot: the author has a nice writing style, not going into endless story, exposing clearly its arguments and way of thinking. Because it is mostly ideas and definitions, the summary is mostly a list of unordered ideas.
Table of Contents
- Revealing the Paradox
- Epistemology
- Modalities of Power
- Multi‑Locality as Urbanization
- Politics of Territorialism
- Political Topology
- Presence vs. Absence
- Heterotopia of the Body
- City of Cyborgs
Revealing the Paradox
Before COVID, the city was considered the best place to live: friends, services, work.
Because everything is concentrated, globally we save energy: public transportation vs. individual cars, heating apartments costs less than heating a house, public infrastructure (water, electricity, internet, gas) costs less to deploy, etc.
So it seems that density has positive effects on human life. This is a narrative—a story that the city will save the world. This view is not traditional compared to urbanism researchers who try to find, as scientists do, “truth.”
In 2018, the urban population on Earth was 55%.
What does it mean?
The author takes the example of a man: he wakes up in his apartment, takes the subway to another city for work, takes a break in a park, goes grocery shopping, and goes back home.
In which city does this man live? His time is split between several places. He also accepts living in a small apartment rather than a large house, accepting air pollution and noise. Is that the best place to live?
On the recommendation of the United Nations, the goal of statistics is to gather data to measure “everyday life” in order to improve infrastructure, living conditions, services, rights, and more.
The problem is that you are registered in a given city, but you frequently move to other cities or districts. You rarely stay within the 15‑minute radius around your home unless you are wealthy and lucky.
Here comes the concept of corporeal—the people who are present at some moment, doing something, not the administrative, imaginary people. It is a kind of distinction between living and staying.
Living is linked to the place where you sleep, your residential address; staying is a place where one can take a snapshot of your presence. Thus, living is more administrative; staying is where you spend your time.
Another point to highlight is the amount of second homes, which is high in some countries, such as Spain (15%). With the pandemic and homeworking, their occupation rate increased. As “social distancing” was recommended, being in a less dense area was a better option for living. For retired people who have no restriction on moving from one place to another, establishing a hierarchy between two or more homes is not straightforward.
So now, people tend to live in several places at the same time, which is far from the statistician paradigm that thinks people live in a single place.
A strange concept is the “neighborhood,” or dormitory area, where you would have your apartment and some services. But you would need to work elsewhere, so you have to move away from this area. Urbanists are still planning this type of enclave.
The Epistemology of Escape and Predator Epistemology: Knowing and Failing to Know Multi‑Local Spatiality
During summer, the population of a city can double.
What about a nomad, like a journalist who moves from country to country to work? Who lives where?
There is a problem of thinking: there are the utopias, the social norms, the way of thinking, and what there really is. It is not easy to think about living correctly, so people have multi‑localities.
Before mobile phones, you needed to wait for someone to be near a phone that could not move. Now, with a smartphone, it doesn’t matter where the person is, as long as she can listen to you, wherever she is.
During COVID and lockdown, two things showed up:
- it is possible to work from home, and most people appreciated it, as big cities also mean long commute times;
- there is a need for countryside, nature, and less density. Large cities are more impersonal; you may see more people there but know fewer of them.
Modalities of Power: What Are the Many Places for Their Users, and Who Can Use Them?
We tend to think with a narrow view, a prototype of a human being—someone who works and has a family, for instance. However, we fail to consider the set of all possibilities. There isn’t a single human prototype that represents the dominant living style. Also, people are not static; they move from one place to another. We need to look at the flows of people, not just the individuals.
There are mobility factors that are important: can you go by foot, bicycle, or car? Is it accessible (e.g., for a disability or a stroller)?
There are additional, perception‑related factors: is it safe, what image do I give by going there, do I know if this place exists…
Finally, do I have the right to go there, and who are the people allowed? Some activities are permitted by law but unknown to users. For instance, in a forest you might be allowed—or not—to gather mushrooms, depending on whether the forest is private, if you need a license, etc. This type of “unknown” prevents full usage of a shared place and can lead to conflicts.
Multi‑Locality as Urbanization
There are two main schools that study urbanism:
- urbanism, which focuses on how we live in a city, the behavioral changes;
- urbanization, how the city grows, the evolution of concentration of people, services, and others.
The second school deals with data to measure phenomena. But according to the author, terms like “urban population” and “communities” are not well defined.
When the United Nations says that the urban share changed from 17% to 50% between 1950 and 2015, a definition of “urban” is missing. How do we count the number of people? Based on where they are living, spending their leisure time, working, or all of the above?
Movement and modality
Some people see a correlation between cities and wealth. If people are concentrated, the likelihood that two people can do business together is larger. There are more chances for ideas to fructify. This is not because of density, but because of connectivity—how things are organized together. In a city, some places are famous and attract people: a theater, a good university, a hospital… These specialized places, drawing people from the region—not just the city—allow individuals with similar interests to meet.
In a city, the promise is to get everything within a 15‑minute walk. In reality, it is difficult to have everything you want within this distance.
The Politics of Territorialism
The limit between urban and rural is often unclear. Urban areas often control the nearby rural area for their own desire: to get more space, to produce/store stuff, to build services, commercial centers, etc.
The boundary between two cities or two regions is easy to deal with. However, there is a hierarchy: city, region, state, and all have their own interest to use the land.
Nations are not natural limits; they are abstract for the people who live in them. But they exist, and they govern trade possibilities, embargoes, protectionism, and high‑level rules. They also have the role of protecting their territory through the army.
Political Topology
You can start by considering people with multiple houses, but you can also start by looking at homeless people. They have no stable place, yet they are in the city and move from place to place. Even without an address, they occupy space and need access to toilets, food, etc.
There is a mismatch in a city: it is not because you have a lot of work there that you can afford to buy a house or an apartment. This creates frustration for commuters who need one hour to travel from their house to their office.
Now we have teleworking: working from home or from the office, which reduces commuting time. You still have a legal place to work, but now, where do you really work? Some workers may misinterpret the situation and use their Friday to start the weekend earlier, avoiding crowded roads.
The Logic of Presence and Absence
What does it mean to be absent?
If you are absent from the office, you are teleworking: from home, from a café, from your car (maybe). You are absent and present at the same time.
When you are late to the office, you might be criticized not for poor performance, but because you were absent when you should have been there.
Heterotopia of the Body
There are homes where we stay for a long time, and temporary homes we use for a night: a tent or a hotel.
A museum is an accumulation of time: old objects are kept while new ones are added. Nothing is replaced or discarded.
The City of Cyborgs
You would say that humans are not cyborgs yet.
However, cities are made for pedestrians, which in summary are human beings with shoes that have the capability to move from one place to another. What about a driver, which in summary is a human being with tires that has the capability to move (faster) from one place to another?
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